


Let Me Count The Ways

by bumblebee_rose



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblebee_rose/pseuds/bumblebee_rose
Summary: She loves him with passion like red fruit that leaves her lips stained burgundy.A little reminiscence through Tessa’s eyes of all the reasons she loves him, using Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “How Do I Love Thee.”





	Let Me Count The Ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

 

Except she can’t.

She can’t count on all her fingers, or compile a list large enough, or shout from the rooftops the extent of her love her for him.

She loves him in the morning, dark hair draped across his forehead, and pillow lines on his cheek. She watches as the sunlight moves across his face, painting him in soft light, and turning his skin to pale gold, showcasing all the parts of him she could gaze at for eons. She loves him like Van Gogh loved the stars, like Degas loved his dancers. Whole and fulfilling, endless and all encompassing.

 

She used to think that when she fell in love it would be instant. A touch of the hand, a meeting of the eyes that she would feel in her chest, and it would swaddle her in want and need that she would chase like the setting sun.

She didn’t realize it would creep on her like growing ivy.

 

It was small things, his voice like silk and burlap at the same time against the shell of her ear, telling her she was worth it all. The gentle way he held her, the cadence he used when he spoke of them.

She didn’t realize she loved him when she admired his generosity, or when she went back for him, or when she let him into her bed for the first time but _oh_ , she knows now she loves him like Jesus loved Judas.

She loves him like the flowers love the sun and like the stars love the moon, like Peter loves Wendy, innocent and naive. She loves him in their highest highs, and lowest lows, she loves him like the shores love the sea.

 

Sometimes she can see the marks she’s left on him, purple bruises along his collarbones and red from her painted lips, blue dye from her jeans, and black ink from her dripping stationary. He laughs when he looks at himself in the mirror, says she turns him into a piece of art; _fine_ art she thinks impishly.

He took her to a museum once and made her listen while he found every part of her in the artwork. He would trace statues of smooth stone and reminisce about her curves, study oxidized copper on ancient jewelry and write sonnets about her eyes, point out dark Greek vases and tangle his fingers in her hair. She found her love for him everywhere she turned. In the careful carvings sat atop white pedi stools, and the delicate brush work in paintings, in the strong protection of metal helmets, and the unchanging desire in every framed photo. They make masterpieces out of each other but they wouldn’t dare display themselves for so many others, they’re kept secret and locked away like all of mans most precious indulgences.

 

She loves his hands on her body, fingers spread like he wants to feel every last corner of her. He can strip her bare with his eyes, make her feel naked with his touch, cause her to grow dizzy with desire. He’s always so careful with her, his gentle hand on her lower back, and his lips against her throat, body pressing into hers, and feet brushing against her calf under the table. He handles her like she’s made of the most infinite pieces of the universe; stardust, and glaciers, and ancient languages lost in time.

She loves him when he makes her laugh, when her cheeks hurt because she’s so happy. She loves rushed whispers against her ears and, half moon glances that convey entire conversations. He’ll always be the person who could steal the breath from her lips like it was hard candy, make her forget her woes as if they were nothing more than a sixteenth note in an entire symphony. He’s kind, and caring, and magnanimous and altruistic, and he loves her, and some days she can’t quite believe it.

 

He buys her coffee in the morning even though her order changes like the moon, and sneaks up behind her, even though the change in his pocket clinks together and she can sense him from a mile away anyways. He wraps his arms around her like she’s worth saving, and twists his fingers into her shirt.

“I missed you so fucking much.” He mumbles into her neck even though he’s only been gone barely an hour, and she often goes away for much longer, yet she can’t string together a sentence of words to describe the multitudes of what she feels.

 

She loves him freely, like the sun on her skin, and the lavender growing in her garden. She doesn’t think about it too often, but they’ve lived a good portion of their lives in the others hand. Never had she felt chained to him though, like she’s dragging lead behind her, and scraping her feet against the floor. To her, their love tastes like the sweet mint of his toothpaste, and kisses goodbye and hello. They’ve always had the facilities to love each other over oceans.

She goes on trips, poses for photo shoots with lips stained rose, and gold scattered across her eyelids like antiques in a shop and it’s fine. They’ve always been wildly, contrastingly different, puzzle pieces that still somehow fit together, and it’s good for them. He trains and mentors and helps in ways she couldn’t imagine, and they adore him and she couldn’t wish anything different for the both of them. They exist in orbit around each other, pieces of stars that always find their way back together; they always do, because she catches his smile like lightning bugs in the palm of her hand when they meet again in the foyer of their house and it’s like falling in love all over again. She’s never been able to resist him, a few weeks apart doesn’t change the fact that she wants to spend forever in his arms.

They love freely and it’s all she could ever desire.

 

She loves him with the purity of clean sheets. Scrubbed nails and vanilla soap scented hands pulling crisp white cotton over their mattress. In the bright light from the window everything is soft. The curves of his shoulders and the dip in his spine could hold pools of water, and his eyes turn to caramel when he looks at her from across the bed. They match pairs of socks like a game of Go Fish, and fold ambrosial lemon shirts and pullovers into neat piles.

When he pulls her to him in the middle of their rug, the soft flannel of her shirt bunches up around her waist and his hands finds contact with the warmth of her skin immediately. He draws etch-a-sketch shapes along her stomach and they play Pictionary as he traces “I do’s” and “I love you’s” against her thigh.

She remembers sitting in his basement against the plush of his couch and playing Guess Who as his brothers twiddled a red joystick in the next room. He would complain that she didn’t play properly but she didn’t understand, he would ask if they had brown hair, and she would say it was precisely his shade. He would ask if the character was wearing a red shirt and she would say it was the same fire truck colour of his new hockey jersey. She figured out eventually that she just saw most things through him, everything he did she catalogued like the recipes her mother used to store in a small box. She loved him when she was missing her front teeth and their love was pure. She finds herself loving him that way still.

 

She loves him with passion like red fruit that leaves her lips stained burgundy. His hands upon her waist, charting her curves like stars and naming them after God’s like the Greeks did so long ago. His bite like winter wind against her neck, claiming her, marking her. His eyes like dark mousse, temping and seductive, drawing her in like devils cake and leaving her starving. They are passionate lovers, have been ever since he began to relish in the organza of her skin, and the sharp dip between her collarbones.

 

She loves him with the passion ever so present in her old griefs. In pushing through pain like thick honey, getting caught in her throat and making each breath short. Lying in a sterile room with knife blade scars down her legs, each ring of the phone a invitation she no longer wanted. In the silence that surrounded her, damp and dark, and inescapable.

She loves him with the passion of her childhoods faith. With trust that he would be there to catch her, that his hand would never feel unknown in his. She loved him in the way she knew Christmas would come, and that there would be a shiny quarter under her pillow in the morning. She was all endlessly reaching faith when she was younger, faith in him and them.

She forgot she loved him when she didn’t step onto sheet ice for what felt like eternity’s. when she was disoriented from opportunities and his touch felt so far away. She thought she lost her love for him then, that she couldn’t love him when she was missing the part that kept them so closely intertwined. It was only when she was thinking about the things she loved to occupy her years with, that she realized he was the source of it all. She loved the movement they created because it was with him, gliding along blades with him so present beside her, and songs that told their story navigating them through steps. Her deepest dedication had been to him and what they could create together, she couldn’t imagine any of it with someone else.

 

She loves him with every joy of her life, in standing upon raised podiums with him, tears lining the borders of her eyes, and smiles when it doesn’t feel like thousands of eyes are on them. When their two souls seem to fit only another, and her body feels wrong in the hands of anyone else. She loves him with all of her life because all her her life has been with him, she can’t remember a time when he wasn’t familiar to her as the back of her hand.

 

She loves him like the message of their most famous adventure together, until her dying day, forever, and until the end of time, her love belongs to him.


End file.
